1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and process for displaying the layout of a text prepared in an electronic apparatus that functions to prepare text by editing entered character data, and more particularly to such an apparatus and process for enabling efficient layout operation by clearly indicating the species of the characters etc. in the text.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Electronic apparatus having the above-mentioned text preparing function, are already known to perform a process of displaying the layout of the prepared text by replacing each character with a small display element such as a group of plural dots. Such text layout display function is required in the above-mentioned electronic apparatus for the following reason. Since the display screen provided in such electronic apparatus can generally display only a limited number of characters, it is often not possible to confirm the layout of the prepared text on said display screen prior to the printout onto a recording sheet, if the characters are displayed in their original forms on the screen. Thus the characters, numerals, symbols etc. constituting the text are compressed by being replaced with the aforementioned display elements. The display elements are used for displaying the layout of the entire text in the limited space of the screen thereby enabling confirmation of the arrangement or layout of the characters etc.
However, in such conventional text layout display process, the same display element is used commonly for all the characters, numerals, symbols etc. in the text, so that it merely indicates the presence of a character or the like in the corresponding position but does not identify which character is present in which position. However, text preparation with such electronic apparatus often becomes easier if the positions of certain characters, for example particular symbols or numerals, are known, or if the operator can correlate the text layout on the screen with that of a handwritten draft. In such case the efficiency of text preparation will be significantly improved if the species of the characters, symbols etc. can be identified in the text layout display.